Its all in the Lens

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The Christmas Cactus
Whether painting or taking pictures, as an artist you want to lead the viewer into picture and draw their eyes to a focal area. So an artist will blur the edges along with darkening them and sharpen the point of interest. When painting you scrumble the edges to blur them and take a bit more care to sharpen them where you want the viewer to linger a bit more.

In photography its all about the aperture and depth of field. I was always frustrated with the kit lenses that came with my SLR camera. They were "slow"--the aperture at best would go down to 3.5. What was really needed was a number near 2.0 or lower to get that nice bokeh or blurriness in the background. When everything is in focus the viewer never has a place to rest his eyes. When everything in a picture is in focus then nothing is important and the photo looses impact. 

A "fast" lens is a joy to shoot with. They are expensive, but well worth their price. You can become an artist again and choose your point of interest. You can create a work of art and not just another photograph. So if you are wondering why your photographs are not coming out as you would like, it just might be your lens. Fast lenses are normally heavy but if you buy a 4/3 system, Olympus heading the pack in this area, they are a fraction of the weight and not quite as expensive. If you own a fast Cannon or Nikon lens they can weigh more than four pounds! Who wants to lug that around? I am going to play more with my new lens this year and post what I shoot--that's one of my New Year's resolutions!

 

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